As much as I like the Q-dip and Q-drop references, I'm just now connecting a Q-dot that leads to the christening of brand new names.
"BoughtBill" and "EncinoBought"
Why?
Because if they are real people, they've been bought. They're doing their job; it's just business, nothing personal. They have their disinformation assignment, and don't get in their way.
Of course, when you speak their names out loud, what do you get?
bot-bil and en-see-no-bot, which give their new names another dimension and reality.
Until recently, I hadn't really considered that I was dealing with bot-bil, but it could explain many things.
I admit that when I've honed a good sentence or paragraph, I'll re-use it. But it'll be surrounded by other original text.
The problem with BoughtBill's postings is that far too many are high-percentage repeats from his Oracle database.
One class is his re-posting of debunking sources. On the surface, this could be an acceptable re-use. Except, the source material does not always apply. Worse, he's been caught in not understanding what the source material says, thereby debunking his debunk.
Another class are his flame wars, where his insults have been around the block too many times. I don't know how many 4 sentence (or less) postings from him (including subject) that I've seen where the only uniqueness to the posting was which 3 sentences were randomly chosen and in what order.
It is interesting to copy a sentence from his postings, enclose it in double-quotes, shove that into the AlterNet search, and see what comes up. For longer posts, he might tailor an intro or concluding sentence, but that's about it.
GuitarBill starts to resemble more and more BoughtBill, even if a Q-dip human handler exists behind the scenes to approve and tweak the posting from the database suggested by some algorithm according to certain keywords, themes, and opponents as flagged by NSA's carnivore program for response.
Too often particularly when losing, BoughtBill's rebuttal is simply to call the opponent a liar (or Nazi or anti-semetic) on the subject line, accuse them of changing the subject, change the subject, and conclude with more insults.
Bots don't have emotions. They don't have morals. They don't tire of going over the same ground, the same argument, the same points over-and-over. They'll store up weaknesses on their opponents (like personal details) and exploit those mercilessly again and again. Remove their postings or ban them? They don't care. As bots with the means to generate email addresses and IP addresses, they can keep coming back. Worse, such random creation of on-the-fly credentials can be targeted against opponents in a campaign to get them banned.
Final bit of circumstantial evidence? Just to stay abreast of the articles here is a big time commitment. To be active in the comments can be a huge time suck. To take on all who mention 9/11, Israel, or [assigned topic] in an unflattering manner with respect to any recent administration without impacting gainful employment and a personal life, that can only be achieved by a BoughtBot paid-to-post instigator.